skbhagra,
Thanks for your message. It is my pleasure to evaluate your profile for you.
As you may already know,
Stratus Prep works extensively with Indian applicants. Every applicant in India with whom we have worked has been admitted to a top 10 US MBA program (and virtually all have been admitted to the top 3 programs - Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton). The
Stratus Prep team includes a former Wharton (which I know is your dream school) admissions reader as well as similar experts for Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, and Kellogg. Last year, we had an applicant in India with a 2.7/4.0 (US equivalent) admitted to Wharton.
Your academic profile, especially your undergraduate performance at Manipal University, will definitely be a strength for you. Your GMAT performance will also help you significantly, especially at Wharton which is a school that cares A LOT about GMAT (Wharton especially cares about your Quant performance - I trust you got over the 80th percentile?).
Your Cushman & Wakefield experience will also help you by giving you the credibility associated with a major international firm. I would not, however, get into why you had to leave the firm in your application. Instead, speak about the positive aspects of RDB that led you to move to that firm. You will also want to highlight your team leadership experience.
While your entrepreneurial venture ultimately failed, I think that it represents an incredible learning experience. If you were working with
Stratus Prep, we would advise you to prominently feature your entrepreneurial experience and reflect on the lessons you learned from this experience. Don't make excuses about why it failed, but instead focus on what you learned.
The two weaknesses of your application appear to be your lack of leadership experience in the non-profit sector. It would be great if you could get involved with a junior board or get some other strategic non-profit experience as top schools really like to see that. Your other major weakness would be your concern about receiving less than amazing recommendations. If you were working with
Stratus Prep, we would definitely need to work with you to figure from whom you could get super strong recommendations. With lukewarm recommendations, you will not be competitive at the schools you are targeting. We need to think creatively about who you recommenders are.
I think that with expert help you can be competitive at the schools you are targeting, but you need to really focus on making your essays exceptional and addressing the recommendation concerns so that you can compensate for your lack of non-profit/volunteer experience.
Finally, be sure to customize your essays to each school as Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton are really looking for quite different profiles (especially when it comes to those looking to get into finance). When applicants partner with
Stratus Prep, we have them completely customize their applications for each of these schools.
If you are considering working with
Stratus Prep, please feel free to send me a private message here or email me at
shawn.oconnor@stratusprep.com so that we can set up time for a free 30 minute consultation to discuss how we might best work together to help you get into Wharton. Based on our successes last year, I am confident that we can best position you there.
Best of luck!